


Nobody's Wife

by Beatrice_Sank



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: "all those material things you gained", "this wouldn't have happened to Diane", Alternate Universe most probably, Character Study, Gen, I am out of my depths here, Identity Issues, Illness, Still Suburban Life, Tulpas, okay I'll admit I have no idea how to tag this, or maybe not, this is very mysterious alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 18:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12846798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Beatrice_Sank
Summary: Janey-E Jones lives in a world of things. When her husband fades away, the house with the red door turns into a chamber of echoes.Inspired by a Tumblr discussion with laughingpineapple.





	Nobody's Wife

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe Dougie only got sick. Or maybe not. 
> 
> *Warning*: some potentially disturbing content in the background (namely non-con and problematic thoughts on adoption). Reminder that we don't necessarily condone our characters' behavior.

 

Suddenly, she can only hear her own voice.

 

Accidents tend to work this way: a child crosses the street without looking, a man touches a light thinking the power is off, or here, a small vein breaks down and drip, drip, drip until, eventually, silence ensues.

 

Since the stroke, it feels like the house has shrunk down in proportions.

This was not what she aspired to, not what she deserved, after all these years, there had to be some sort of reward, some silver lining to being trapped behind that red door, in this degrading neighborhood where every back-alley had a magic name.

 

It's all very simple, really: once she had a husband, a minor insurance agent who drank, gambled and cheated on her as if there was no tomorrow, for him, for her. Now she only has this heavy body she's supposed to handle.

 

“Trapped in his body”, they say. There are many ways to be trapped, and she doesn't know precisely what is trapped inside his body, but there is a chance that this is not him at all. Not since a current the color of their door has flooded his brain, leaving him perpetually delighted and helpless. There are days where she is scared of that voiceless stranger who can only parrot everything like a parasite attached to his host.

 

She dresses him, feeds him, moves him around and makes him talk: it's a great opportunity for her to invent the husband she never had.

 

*

They need a bigger house, she wants a place where she can breathe, where the horizon isn't blocked by a disturbingly red door. In here she knows the price of everything, feels the fabric of every item as if it was a part of her own body; the living room is worth 15 000 dollars, 20 000 at most, they were never that rich even if she likes to pretend; what she is wearing today is 170 dollars, makeup and hair excluded. Wool, cotton, spandex, polyester and the smallest amount of silk you can put into a garment. She kept all the receipts, she remembers the numbers, and the bills, the bills are real enough, infinitely more so than the rest in the sense that they constitute a trace. The bills are proof that the existence she leads has some kind of substance and cannot be swept away so easily. Nevertheless, even with a price tag on everything, she just knows that the door remains the one real thing in the whole house, its vibrant color putting all the rest to shame.

 

This wouldn't have happened to Diane. She would never have lost her edge, the way she cut right through you, “Keep punishing yourself with that soccer mom bullshit for all I care”, always so wild, and she may have hated her but she was a good listener. “No one is buying this.” She wishes he would buy her more things; she needed a new car, new clothes – why was she wearing sweaters in Vegas anyway –, new meds that wouldn't give her such spectacular headaches, a new phone would come in handy too. Every piece of furniture, every kitchen tool feels threadbare, as if there was something inside the house that worn them out quicker than normal, putting them out of use. He wasn't buying her anything. Couldn't even give her a kid, not really.

 

Maybe that's why Sonny Jim is by far the best thing in her life.

 

And now there are two people in her house with this sad, distant look in their eyes, wishing maybe they were far away from here, wishing to escape. Before the accident, she told him they needed something to prevent Sonny Jim from drifting away, to ground him here with them, an anchor that would convince him that this really was his home. Toys. A new TV. Maybe if he played some sports with him, it would help maintaining his attention, keep him inside the boundaries of their life, force him into presence. She cannot afford to lose him. Dougie said that she was being ridiculous, it wasn't as if the kid was about to fly the coop anyway.

 

“Will Dad wake up one day?”

He so rarely speaks she often thinks she should record it, no to forget his voice, put a mic in front of his mouth every time he miraculously opens it, to be able to replay the sound on her own, to listen to it, once more. He was always quiet but she supposes she notices it much more now.

“It's hard to tell, sweetie. No one knows. Why don't you go and play with him outside? It's sunny; I'm sure he'd like that.”

She watches her son taking him by the hand with caution, and walking him to the garden. One of them is very old and the other very young, one treading with precautions that belong only to those who know the world has hurt them before and will necessarily hurt them again, and the other stumbling lightly, not very aware that he stumbles, not really caring, as if everything was really inconsequential, but she cannot always tell which is which, nor why it's always so sunny outside.

 

*

There are days when she realizes she may like him better this way. Those are cruel days. It's like having a doll: you get to play with it exactly how you've always wanted to, without any complain, any obstacle, without any echo that might oppose your plans. If she sits him at the breakfast table, doing it with the right angle, putting some effort into fixing his tie, parting his hair just so, she can imagine him respectable and successful, the picture of the stern but loving dad, the affectionate husband. She puts his hands flat on the table, gently, and backs up to admire her composition. It almost makes up for everything, those still-life, those framed pictures of a life she was supposed, was designed to have, and may even have wanted. If only his posture wasn't always so stooping.

 

When he was her doll, she would even joke about it. Knock gently on his temple with two knuckles while putting a plate in front of his vacant face, with a joyful “Room service!” that would make Sonny Jim laugh.

 

She can manipulate him in his absence, take off his clothes in their bed and touch him where she wants to touch him, checking if he is as cold as he feels in every spot. That is what he would want, isn't it ? She's lonely and he was always the ladies' man, so it seems justified, almost like a fair return for something that she cannot name. But “almost” isn't “quite”, and there are times she cries in the middle of it, while he stays silent.

 

It's been years, but she wonders where Diane is. Though she had sort of forgotten, now it has all come back, and she thinks of her. More and more these days. If she was still doing those inexplicable things for the FBI – of all jobs, this particular one never made any sense, incapable as she was of following a rule. Diane working for the Feds was the best joke there ever was, back then, and she never quite understood what she gained by it, what charms she could find in that violent, unpredictable life. “My dear sister and her cardigan of conformity.” She gets strange urges, the need to see a picture of her, but can never find one whenever she goes looking in those old boxes in the basement.

 

Diane was always elusive anyway, hard to grasp. And her? Too concrete. Too material. There are days she cannot stand how real she feels, cannot stand that dash of yellow flowers embroidered on her sweater as if they were here to stay. Their mother used to say they were birds of a feather but Diane would laugh and answer it was a very peculiar feather, both colorful and plain. She wishes she could see her husband's suits now; they're never plain, no, not by a mile, and when she dresses him, painfully, every morning, she cannot bring herself to pick something more tasteful. It would be like watching him disappear for good.

 

But her, yes. Concrete and blank, a boring waste of suburban space.

 

Once she thinks she hears him addressing the TV, – he's staring at an old movie she doesn't recognize – a full sentence with an odd reverberation effect to it, words that doesn't quite make sense put together, words that seem to have traveled a great distance to pierce through the walls of her impenetrable house, her silent house.

 

“She's delusional, Gordon.”

 

***

She remembers a time, when was that, but it must have existed, she's almost sure, almost certain, when she loved him with a love so vast, so full, that it sprouted roots of such length she could reach for him even when he was not there.

 

At nights, when he's asleep next to her, a rigid, non-responsive body, colder than ever before, and so still, – but is he even asleep, she cannot tell anymore, cannot grasp the positive difference between those two states, awake, asleep, alive, dead are you there, darling, are you really. There. – she tells him sometimes, softly, adventurously:

“I wish you would come back.”

It's like talking to someone on the phone when you're not sure there's a connection at all.

 

*

She wasn't always like this either, she had soured, in that preserve jar of a life, and all that fierceness had turned against him, against herself. This was probably why she wasn't talking to Diane anymore, although it's hard to remember how this all began, but her marriage seems like a good breaking point. Accidents.

 

Half-sister, and she wasn't even half of what she used to be. Of what Diane used to be. A fallen saint of the suburbs, a caged animal that is too fierce and yet too domesticated. When she was young she had all this power, the idea that the world would curb to her will if she threatened it hard enough, an anger that she didn't spill on the cashiers at Walmart, then. She knew how to channel it differently, to actually get things done instead of raging at the state of petrification of this goddam desert town, slowly crackling under the pressure of the everlasting sun.

 

To speak the truth, she never believed they were so different after all. But Diane always hated that part of her who _wanted_ things. Who wanted a husband. Who wanted a child. A house. Who wanted to be listened to rather than to listen to others. Diane might be freer than she ever will be, much more difficult to catch, but there was a kind of self-effacement in the way she ended up insulting those who needed to be insulted, kissing those who needed to be kissed, and rarely ever let herself desire freely, as if it was a capital sin to tell everyone to finally shut up and reach to grasp what your heart had settled on.

*

He used to talk so much, all the time.

He…

“Dougie” really is a stupid nickname, and she is well aware that they have develop a problem with that, this family, but the thing with stupid nicknames is, after a while, you begin to forget the real names that lurk behind them.

 

She has unclear memories of listening to monologues – was it when he was drunk ? Wasn't beneath him, to try to sweet-talk her into forgetting the mess he made, « sound plans » that always went awry, « as good as won » bets that he always lost, « dealt with » mobsters that kept coming back. She supposes a part of him always wanted to be some sort of secret agent, the perfect hero of another life, and all the failed plans ensued. In spite of it all, people liked him, continued to like him through his chaotic choices, because he _was_ , in a way, likeable.

She doesn't understand how she ever tired of listening to him. Now he only repeats, and not even consistently. Though most of the time he doesn't bother. It should pain her to admit it, but this is how they have their best conversations in what seems like twenty years, the echo always wise, less predictable that you would think, because who really listens to oneself talking, who pays attention to the actual words one uses ? It is when he copies her that she finds him enlightening.

 

One night, when she cannot sleep anymore, she hears him say – she thinks she hears him say, but that may not be him, may be someone else entirely, because the voice is slightly different again, she believes, and his back is turned to her, so there is no way to be sure, to be, really. Sure.

 

“Diane, I wish you would come back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the famous “Famous Blue Raincoat” by Leonard Cohen, and I like to think the lyrics are relevant to interpret this, especially if you try to think about who is talking to who.
> 
> This story was inspired by a Tumblr discussion with laughingpineapple, on the subject of Janey-E being too materialistic in her relation with Dougie. I enjoyed her take on it and from there I… extrapolated. 
> 
> I was aiming for something vaguely Lynchean, so I tried to keep this as simple and as blank as possible, to leave it open. To me there are at least two possible readings, maybe three. Maybe more? But I just killed the author with my bare hands, she's in the bathtub now, and you're completely free. Are there any tulpa involved here? If so, which ones, and how many? What is real and who is the dreamer and when is the year and where the hell are we now, well, you know the music. That being said, I hope it still makes some kind of sense, but hey.


End file.
